Matt Barton, M.F.A.

Matt Barton, M.F.A.

COLU 1005

About

By straddling many disciplinary thresholds, my creative work explores the possibilities available through new digital media and audience participation by expanding notions of sculpture into immersive installations. While tailoring to a first-hand multi-sensory experience, I am concerned with engaging the viewer in multi-media environments in which the astonishment of spectacle gives way to deeper existential questions of the nature of reality by blurring boundaries between dream, fantasy, and reality, and confusing the distinctions between sacred and secular, kitsch and spiritual, while exploring the importance of humor and play. Brightly colored jovial surfaces serve as entry points to contemplate more difficult inquiries into the nature of time, idyllic notions of the afterlife, and the harmonic balance of the beautiful and the disturbing. Simple analogue mechanical components are intertwined with digital video projected and embedded on flat screens, creating a dialogue between old and new technologies and evoking sensations of the uncanny and/or sublime.